Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Ignition Time.
I'll take you behind the scenes of the latest March jobs report,
which actually shows strong hiring momentum in the US economy.
I did do another video on our channel talking about the good news pertaining
to the the latest March jobs numbers, but there is more to explore here.
Welcome to this episode of Ignition Time everyone.
This episode is based on this article from the Wall Street Journal.
US March Jobs Report shows strong hiring momentum.
In fact, a lot of economists see the labor market
growing much faster as more and more workers seek jobs.
In fact, the US Labor market did
strengthen last month as we start to recover from the pandemic.
Take a look at this chart on your screen,
which shows you the change in payrolls since January 2020.
Employers added 431,000 new jobs in March.
Why?
Because restaurants, manufacturers, and retailers started hiring.
And hiring in January and March was much stronger than previously reported.
In fact, this report marks the 11th straight month of job gains above
400,000 and this is the longest such stretch of growth in records that have
been dated back to 1939, which means we are getting back to life as we know it.
The unemployment rate fell because it was 3.8% a month earlier.
It's quickly approaching the February 2020 prepandemic rate of 3.5%,
which by the way was a 50 year low. And low joblessness is helping boost wages,
although inflation is definitely a problem.
So here's something interesting.
The pandemic was less likely to deter work
searches in March than just a month earlier.
In other words, people now are feeling
comfortable about stepping out and working.
Now what's interesting is 1.2 million people could not look for a job
in February as a direct result of the pandemic.
But in March that number actually fell to 900,000.
Also, this is good news.
The labor force participation rate, which by the way is the share of people
employed or looking for work, increased to 62.4% in March.
And this is up from 62.3% in February.
Now the prepandemic levels were 60.2%.
So in other words, more and more people are getting back into the workforce.
We still have a long way to go because there are still many individuals,
hundreds of thousands of individuals who are in the workforce before
the pandemic who are not in the workforce right now.
But we are getting back to work.
Specifically, women, more than 300,000 women got back
into the labor workforce in March, and this, by the way accounted
for a substantial portion of the growth in the labor workforce.
So there are still fewer women aged 16
and up in the workforce relative to prior to the pandemic.
The male workforce has completely recovered.
Now, what's interesting is women, more women need to get back
into the workforce, but they are getting back slowly.
But men, the recovery of males as it
pertains to the workforce is indeed complete.
Not only that, many retirees are coming back to work.
In February, the share of retired workers
reentering the workforce climbed to around 3% of total retirees.
In short, this is a good thing.
Let's take a look at this chart on your screen.
Payrolls by sector and the change since January of 2021.
You can start to see that payroll is actually increasing for leisure
and hospitality, for retail trade, for manufacturing, for the government.
This is all good news.
According to Lydia Busor, who is an economist at Oxford Economics,
all the constraints on the labor supply that were prevailing in 2021 have really
eased a really important factor in driving that next leg of the recovery and getting
employment back to where it was before the pandemic.
This is all good news.
Everyone and economists are actually pointing to several factors that are
actually converging to get people back into the workforce.
Factor number one, household savings are declining.
All the stimulus checks,
all the unemployment benefits, all of them have now been used up.
This is actually pressuring people to get back to work.
Covid, fortunately is declining,
so more and more individuals are now getting back to work.
In March, there were 2.8 million people who said they were out of work because
they were sick or because they were caring for someone with COVID symptoms.
This actually was down from 8.8 million people in early January.
That is a substantial change.
In fact, let's take a look at this image on your screen.
The US Labor workforce level change from January 2020.
We can start to see that in January 2020, the workforce fell substantially.
But now as we make our way towards the current time towards March 2022,
you can start to see what we're already in April, but you can start to see
that basically people have indeed come back to work.
Now, companies are still struggling
to hire workers, so there's still a long way to go.
But the good news is let's take a look at another image on your screen.
Change from a year earlier in hourly
earnings and inflation for private workers, goods producing Workers,
Leisure and hospitality Workers, and Consumer Price Index.
In short, more and more people are indeed getting back to work.
This is all good news.
And finally, let's take a look at this
chart, which represents the unemployment rate.
And you can start to see how
the unemployment rate went as high as 14.7% in April 2020.
And now the unemployment rate is down
in March 2022, all the way down to 3.6%. Now remember, we were at 3.5% in January
2020 and now we are down all the way to 3.6%, which is actually fantastic.
Also, average hourly earnings grew 5.6% in March from a year earlier.
And although wage growth remains elevated compared with before the pandemic,
inflation is very high and that really makes things difficult for many workers.
Now, the good news is that the tight labor market is actually a boon for many
Americans Including people who switch jobs and people who are out of work.
Almost one third of employees who switch
jobs during the pandemic are earning 30% higher 30% more than they did in the prior
role and many unemployed are quickly getting new jobs.
This is all good news so the fact is more and more individuals are getting back
to work, Individuals who switch jobs are getting pay increases and America is
getting back on track and we are returning to prepandemaic levels of unemployment.
In short, the pandemic is behind us
economically but I can tell you that the emotional scores,
the financial scores will remain, not to mention the loss of life.
Almost 1 million Americans dead as a result of this pandemic and if there's
an empty chair at your dinner table, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I actually lost my mother a few months ago.
It wasn't directly as a result of COVID
but it was indirectly as a result of COVID Because I think COVID forced her
to become more and more sedentary And I think that led to a decline in her health
and I think COVID has impacted us emotionally, mentally, forever.
At least there is some good news as
a light at the end of the tunnel right now thank you so much for watching.
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Nathan soda with ignition time this right
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Take a moment to check out my video.
You'll learn how I was able to overcome
the cycle of poverty that you see on your screen right now.
Thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you.
I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next episode of ignition time.
Take care, bye.